


sometimes you close your eyes

by emery_and_lead



Series: Girl in the War [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brooklyn, F/M, Gen, Kid Bucky Barnes, Kid Steve Rogers, M/M, Pre-Series, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Skyscrapers, in which the odyssey is maligned, newsboy bucky, shoeshiner steve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5448710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emery_and_lead/pseuds/emery_and_lead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And see the place where you used to live. </i>
</p><p>In the summer of 1929, Bucky gets a job as a newsboy. Steve kneels on street corners to shine people’s shoes, gets into trouble, and draws skyscrapers in the dirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sometimes you close your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this was supposed to be just a short little one-shot with Bucky as a newsboy in 1929 and Steve as his favorite mouthy little shit, but then something resembling plot happened and it turned into this. My sister beta-ed for me, as usual, so thanks Lil. I probably won't update again until finals are over. Basically you are reading the fruits of my procrastination over the past five days.
> 
> Title and summary quote from _When You Were Young_ by The Killers.

This morning Brooklyn is full of fast cars and sunshine, people on the sidewalks and vendors in the streets selling hot dogs, nuts, lemonade. Bucky pedals faster, standing up on the pegs as he tries to keep up with the car beside him, the wind whipping his hair down where it catches in his eyelashes. He sees Steve before Steve sees him, sitting by the side of the road. Waiting for him.

Bucky comes in fast, spinning his bike to a screaming stop with one foot out to catch himself, and grins at Steve through the cloud of dust the wheels kick up. It hovers around Steve, catching the light like a golden nimbus in the painting of a saint.

Bored, all his papers sold and nothing to do until he went to see Steve, Bucky practiced that whirlwind stop for hours, in the empty lot at the end of their street where a tenement building burnt down in ’21. Throwing his bike around over and over, he fell into the weeds every time until he learned to catch his weight just right.

“You’ll ruin your shoes showin’ off like that, Buck,” Steve says from his shoeshine box on the corner, knees and elbows knocking together. The shadows from the buildings on the other side of the road don’t reach far enough to shade him, and Bucky can see the sunburn starting in his cheeks. “And don’t think you’ll get a free shoeshine outta me. I ain’t one of your girls who’ll fall over my own feet soon as you shoot me that smile.”

Bucky swings off his bike and leans it up against the lamppost. There’s dust in his mouth so he turns and he spits, and laughs at Steve’s grimace. “You dunno how impressive I  _am_ , Rogers. If you did you’d be  _licking_  ‘em clean.” He kicks Steve’s box lightly. Shifting a half-step to the left blocks the sun so Steve can look up at him without squinting, Bucky’s shadow falling across his shoulders and head.

Steve swats at Bucky’s foot. He misses, but only because he’s not looking, his eyes narrowed on Bucky’s face. “You’re crazy if you think you’re gettin’ me anywhere near the kid who abandoned me on this street corner to die slow of boredom.”

“Aw, c’mon Stevie, you ain’t dyin’ out here,” Bucky says, nudging Steve’s shoulder with his knee. It’s the closest thing he can reach. Their bones knock together in a familiar way, and when Steve tries to frown up at him it doesn’t come out quite right, too smiley around the edges. “You would be, if you had to run round the city all day like a blind cockroach way I do. The dust gets your throat all clogged up and you can barely breath as it is. And this sack full of papers weighs more’n you do.” He adjusts the canvas strap and pats the bag at his hip, right over the name of the newspaper where it’s stamped onto the side.

Steve looks him up and down like his ma does sometimes, mouth twisted to one side. “That sack’s fuckin’ empty.”

“Your ma’d cuff you if she heard you talkin’ like that. Or scrub out your mouth with soap.”

Steve shrugs. His shoulders are so bony Bucky imagines he can hear them rattling. “Nah, she wouldn’t waste soap on me.”

Bucky can’t help the grin. “That why you stink?”

He scrambles back laughing when Steve kicks out at him. The cap Steve’s wearing used to be Bucky’s and it’s too big on him, sliding down his forehead and casting a shadow over his face. He tips it up with one finger so Bucky can see his scowl. “Don’t you have a job to get to?”

There’s real bitterness in his voice, underneath the teasing. Bucky ignores the tug of guilt in his stomach and swings around the lamppost with one hand, the other outstretched like a beggar’s. He keeps his voice light, because he’s not sure Steve would understand it. Steve would chew his own arm off before he ever begged for anything, would swallow his tongue before his pride. “Don’t be that way, Stevie. I’m twelve years old. I couldn’t have shined shoes forever.”

Steve huffs and kicks a pebble at Bucky, but it flies wide and hits the bike instead, pinging off the spokes. “Oh, so it ain’t good enough for your highness but it’s all right if I’m stuck here for the rest of my life, sittin’ on this box ‘til my skeleton falls apart.”

“Your skeleton’s already falling apart, it’s just that your skin keeps gettin’ in the way,” Bucky says, and grins as he dodges the pebble Steve lobs at his head. It skitters out into the road, caught under the wheel of a taxicab, and a man passing on the sidewalk swerves to avoid Bucky, glaring and muttering under his breath. Bucky apologizes, hat in hand with his most charming smile, and turns back to shake his head at Steve. “Lookit you. Always makin’ trouble.”

“Aw, get outta here,” Steve says, but a smile tugs at his mouth like he’s trying to pull it back into place. “Mr. Hoffmann doesn’t care if I take breaks sometimes, but I still gotta make my quota.” There are cars rushing past and people clogging the sidewalk, any number of potential customers passing them by. Bucky feels a little guilty for that, but Steve waves a hand and lets the smile win. “Go on. Go ride your fancy bike and holler at people and get massive tips outta the rich bastards on Broadway.”

Bucky snorts and kicks a broken chunk of sidewalk out from under his bike, still propped up by the lamppost. “You know Broadway ain’t on my route. Child’s is, though. I’ll get you one of those butter cakes you like on the way back. We can walk home together.”

Steve frowns. “I can buy my own damn biscuits.”

Bucky rolls his eyes as he picks up his bike. He needs to pick up the next round of papers from the office, and Steve needs to get back to shining shoes before he misses his quota. “You’re lucky I don’t tell your ma all the things you say when she can’t hear you.”

“I mean it. I got almost enough here,” Steve says, leaning back on the box to reach his hip pocket. The coins rattle as he tries to fish them out. “We can go together.”

Bucky shakes his head and guides his bike away a few steps, far enough that Steve can’t reach him to press the coins into his hands or slip them into his pockets. “Nah, it’s on my way. I been riding around all day, I won’t wanna double back for your sorry ass.” Steve doesn’t laugh the way Bucky wanted, doesn’t get distracted so easily. He stares at Bucky for a second, and Bucky thinks he’s going to argue. Eventually he just nods.

“I’ll pay you back,” he says firmly, a determined little dent in the middle of his forehead.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Fine. As you please,” he says, and starts walking the bike away from the curb. He’s jogging by the time he swings up onto the seat, Steve on his box on the corner getting smaller and smaller as Bucky looks over his shoulder and calls, “See ya!”

Steve says something back, but he’s a block away and the air is rushing past Bucky’s ears, and the words get lost somewhere between them.

~~~

They walk side by side on the shoulder of the road, Bucky leading his bike by the handlebars and Steve swinging his shoeshine box as high as his arm can go. The butter cake from Child’s is in Steve’s other hand, and he takes a bite every few steps, bigger bites than you’d expect out of someone so small. He’s talking with his mouth full.

“Oh,” says Bucky, interrupting Steve’s muffled story about a man who tried to pay him with two cigarettes and a cough drop, “I meant to tell you earlier. They’re building another one.”

“They’re  _not_ ,” Steve says on a groan.

“Yep. Was on the front page today.”

Steve looks out across the rooftops at the bare beams, exposed like a blackened skeleton, in the half-constructed top of the Chrysler Building. “The tallest building in the world.” He sighs. “Maybe it’ll be prettier once it’s finished.”

“This new one’s gonna be even bigger, they said. Wanna know what they’re calling it?”

“No,” says Steve, and Bucky cheerfully ignores him.

“The Empire State Building.”

Steve snorts and kicks a loose bit of concrete into the gutter. “’Cause that ain’t pretentious at all.” His hat’s falling down into his eyes again, and his sunburned ears stick out the sides, pushed out even further by the weight of it. Both the hat and the ears are too big for his head.

Bucky laughs at him and nudges his shoulder with an elbow. “Only you’d say ain’t and pretentious right in a row like that.” He has to let go of the bike with one hand and it wobbles dangerously toward the street. A man in a passing car leans on the horn and Bucky imagines sticking up his middle finger, but he has to grab hold of the bike to keep it steady, and it wouldn’t do much good anyway.

Steve has finished his biscuit and now has a free hand, so Steve does it for him. “Whaddaya doin’?” he calls after the car as it rounds the next corner. “Asshole.” Bucky laughs again and Steve smiles at him, squinting in the sunlight.

They turn down the street where Mr. Hoffmann’s place is, so Steve can return his shoeshine box for the night. It’s still light out even though it’s coming on suppertime, and the air smells like hot pavement and the almonds roasting in a cart on the corner.

Bucky waits slouched outside the door with his bike propped on his hip while Steve goes in to talk to Mr. Hoffmann. The nut vendor wipes sweat from his forehead in the heat rising up from the griddle, and Bucky calls out a greeting he returns with a short wave, distracted.

Bucky’s looking out at the distant, ugly point of the Crysler Building, trying to imagine what it might look like when it’s finished, when a boy shoulders past him into Mr. Hoffmann’s place with a shoeshine box in his hand. He’s older than Bucky and bigger around the shoulders, with a blunt, mean face and a swagger in his step.

A burly dog trails after him, leash wrapped around the boy’s wrist, and behind the dog comes a girl Bucky recognizes from school. She has her arms around a leather-bound notebook hugged close to her chest, and she stares at her shoes as she walks.

She stops outside the door as well, on the other side, standing apart from Bucky and looking deliberately away down the street. The boy brings the dog with him into the building and doesn’t even look at her.

Bucky’s head is still facing the Chrysler Building in the distance, but he watches her from the corner of his eye. He can tell she doesn’t see him looking. Her shoulders are hunched and her hair falls down around her face like a wall. She reaches into her pocket for a pencil that she sets between her teeth so she can flip the pages of the notebook with both hands.

She settles on a page about halfway in and takes the pencil out of her mouth, making short quick lines on the paper like Bucky’s seen Steve do when he’s putting the final touches on a drawing, adding shadow and dimension and depth.

That’s when Steve walks out the door, coins jangling in his pockets. When he sees the girl standing by the door, he smiles. “Hi,” he says, and she looks up at him quickly, jolting like a startled bird. “Is that a drawing?” he asks, even though he must know from the way the girl’s pencil had been moving. He’s made those same motions a hundred times himself, pencil loose in his hand, hunched over the small table in his mother’s kitchen with Bucky watching from the other side.

The girl nods slowly and flashes Steve a small smile, tucking her hair behind one ear tilting the sketchbook so Steve can see. “It’s not so good,” she says, shrugging a shoulder. “Just somethin’ to pass the time.”

“I dunno. Looks pretty good to me,” he says, and her smile gets stronger when she meets his eyes. Bucky imagines the way she must see them, clear blue and reflecting the sunlight that slants past the tops of the buildings across the street. They’re probably crinkly at the corners, over his white teeth in that smile too big for his face. “Who’s it of?”

The girl looks down at the sketchbook again, tracing something on the page with her finger. Bucky can’t see what’s there, but he can picture her finger running down the side of a dark face etched in graphite. “The woman who lives across from us. She’s always smoking out on the fire escape. She looks sad.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly, and his smile has faded away. “She does.”

Steve glances at Bucky with a question in his eyes and Bucky tips his head in silent agreement, settling back against the wall to wait.

With a quick smile for Bucky, Steve turns to ask the girl what kind of pencil she used for the line work and Bucky stops understanding what they’re saying. He watches the way Steve talks with his hands, the smooth, open gestures he gets from his mother, and the way the girl gradually turns toward him while he explains something about pencil strokes.

Steve’s constant motion gets him tired quicker, makes his breath come short and sharp in his chest. It worries Bucky, but he can’t imagine asking Steve to stop.

The girl is flipping through the pages of her sketchbook, showing Steve her other drawings while he peers over her shoulder, when the boy comes back out of the shop with the dog at his heels. When he sees Steve his face goes dark. “Who the fuck are you?”

The girl looks up and the smile leaves her face between one blink and the next. She turns toward the boy and moves in front of Steve a little, protecting him, or maybe hiding him from view. “He’s just from school—”

The boy takes one looming step closer. His face turns an ugly, splotchy red that spreads slowly down his neck and creeps up toward his hairline. “Did I ask you, Clara? Does anyone wanna hear you run your mouth? You can’t be going around talkin’ to any old boys on the street. What the hell are you thinkin'?  _Do_  you even think?”

“But Jacob, he’s just…” she gestures at Steve, a small stunted motion of her hand. “I mean,  _look_  at him.” Bucky doesn’t really understand what she’s talking about. He glances over at Steve, but he looks just the same as always, an angry little dent between his eyebrows, the color in his cheeks higher than the sunburn can account for.

Clara’s brother seems to understand what Bucky doesn’t, from the way he throws his hands up in the air. The leash attached to his wrist pulls at the dog’s neck and Bucky winces, catches Steve doing the same from the corner of his eye. “Exactly! People on the street see you with a kid like that, what they gonna think?”

Clara shrinks back into herself, undoing all of Steve’s hard work in a single moment. “I don’t know—”

“That’s right, you  _don’t_  know.” Jacob’s face and neck are both fully red now. Bucky thinks he might not be an ugly boy, if the scowl didn’t twist up his face so much. “You don’t know nothin’. If it’s so hard for you to get into your head, just don’t talk to fuckin’ anyone. Just stop talkin’ at all.”

And it’s that moment when Steve steps into Jacob’s personal space, bony shoulders straight and tense, thin fingers making sharp little fists at his sides. He tries to block the girl with his body though he’s far thinner than she is, tries to get in the other boy’s face though Steve barely reaches above his collarbones.

“Who died and made you king?”

The boy takes a step closer but Steve holds his ground, lifts his chin. The boy's eyebrows come together like two storm clouds colliding. “The fuck you say to me?”

“I said,” says Steve, planting his feet and drawing himself up. Even though he’s small, there’s something in his eyes that makes Bucky hold his breath. “Who died and made you  _fucking_  king?”

Jacob’s fists clench. Bucky takes an instinctive step forward. A muscle in Steve’s jaw twitches, fast and angry, and Bucky can’t seem to look away. “Kid, you watch your  _fuckin’_  mouth.”

Steve takes one fatal step closer. When he smiles, slow and wide, Bucky knows they’re in trouble. “Yes, your highness.”

The boy lunges and Bucky is there, one hand on Jacob’s chest to steady his target and the other swinging in for a shot to the face. Jacob stumbles back and Bucky helps him along, shoving his chest with the hand that’s already planted there.

Jacob drags the dog along by his collar, a high whine in the back of its throat, and Bucky winces again. It makes him feel a little sick, that sound, but he doesn’t regret it. He can imagine the sound in the back of Steve’s throat if one of those heavy fists hit him in the chest. He knows a hard enough blow from a boy like that could stop Steve’s fluttery heart altogether.

When Bucky steps back he takes Steve along, forcing him away as he walks right into him, herding Steve with his body. It works, Steve stumbling back to avoid getting his toes stomped. The dog is barking, loud and rough, and the people passing on the sidewalk glare as they go by.

“Look,” says Bucky, throwing up both hands as Jacob steadies himself. “We don’t want a fight, okay? You just leave us alone, and we’ll leave you alone.

“Oh, I want a fuckin’ fight, alright,” Steve starts, but Bucky shoots him a glare and he shuts up.

Jacob’s lip rises in a sneer, baring his teeth on one side. There’s a bruise blooming around his left eye. “You think I’m just gonna fuckin’ run away? Just like that, you think this is over?"

“Yeah,” says Bucky, hands still up in the air. “Yeah, I think you are. Because if you come over here I ain’t gonna flinch again. I’ll bust up your face, I swear to God, I don’t care if you have a dog or a fuckin’ army or God His own Self.”

The boy stares at them for a moment, fists hard at his sides and darkness looming in his eyes. Eventually he huffs and turns on his heel. “C’mon, Clara,” he says sharply. When he walks away she scrambles to keep up, shoulders still bunched up around her ears, hair hanging down around her face like a veil, or a shield.

Bucky turns back to Steve and sighs. Steve is staring after the girl, hands now loose at his sides, the angry furrow in his brow softened by the look in his eyes. Bucky grabs Steve’s shoulders and holds him still enough to look him over, to make sure Jacob didn’t land any hits while Bucky wasn’t looking. Steve lets Bucky nudge his hat back into place where it’s falling down into his eyes, but after a second he rolls his shoulders and squirms out of Bucky’s grasp.

Bucky frowns at him. “Now he’s spittin’ mad. You prob’ly just made it worse for her. Got yourself in a world of trouble, either way.” He sighs again and goes to fetch his bike where it’s leaning up against the wall. Through the open door, Bucky can see Mr. Hoffmann glaring out at them, and he twists his mouth in silent apology. Mr. Hoffmann rolls his eyes and flaps his hand, shooing them away. “You gotta learn to pick your battles.”

Steve drops his head back like Bucky’s the one being difficult. “C’mon, Bucky. It’s not like I’m picking fights over nothin’. What gives him the right to tell her who she can and can’t talk to? That’s a shit thing to do. To your own sister, jeez. She’s only twelve. What does he think she’ll be getting up to with boys, anyway? With a boy like me, to boot.”

“Whaddaya mean, a boy like you?” Bucky asks, eyes narrowing, but Steve just rolls his eyes like Bucky’s slow. “Doesn’t matter,” Bucky decides. “He seems like a crazy person.”

They fall into step together, Bucky still guiding his bike and Steve beside him with empty hands.

“I know you wanna fix everything,” says Bucky, looking sideways at Steve, “but sometimes it ain’t that easy.”

“Well. It should be.”

There’s not much Bucky can think of to say. He guides his bike around a hole in the pavement. “Yeah,” he says. It’s better than nothing.

He’s in the road and Steve is on the sidewalk, the curb boosting him up so their eyes are level. The sun’s finally low enough that the buildings across the street stop it before it can reach them, and Steve’s hunching into the shoulders of his jacket to keep the chill from creeping down his neck. He’s so bright and so earnest all the time that Bucky sometimes forgets how cold he gets, how easily it seeps into him.

They get to Steve’s apartment before they reach Bucky’s, and he peels off with a smile and a quick, bony hug, holding onto his hat as he bounds toward the door. Bucky rolls his eyes when Steve stops at the top of the stairs, panting a little and digging through his pockets for a key he can’t find.

Bucky drops his bike right there on the curb and takes the stairs up two at a time. He kicks aside the brick hiding the spare key when he gets to the landing, and Steve gives him a smile and a sheepish little shrug as he bends down to grab it.

“Hi, Mrs. Rogers,” Bucky calls, leaning over Steve’s shoulder when he opens the door. Sarah’s standing at the stove in her apron, but she spares him a little wave.

“Hello, James!” she calls back, and her smile is tired but real. She has flour on her cheekbone and a rag over her hands to soften the heat from the stove. The smell of meat and dough drifts out on a swell of warm air. Bucky knows for a fact they can’t afford the good bits, only the ears and tongue and neck, and he has no idea how she can take all the pieces no one wants and make something that smells so good.

“Bye!” he calls, before he can give into temptation and invite himself in for dinner, and she laughs at him and makes the same shooing motion Mr. Hoffmann did. Bucky turns to Steve and grins, gives him a quieter, “Bye,” of his own, and tramps back down the steps to grab his bike up off the ground. He looks up to see Steve shutting the door and waves as he sets off down the street.

He only has to walk two more blocks to reach his own apartment, and he fishes the key from his pocket as he goes. He leaves the bike in the hallway outside the door and walks in to his mother and father shouting down the length of the dining room table, shards of broken glass all around them.

Becca, Judy and Lynn are sitting on the sofa with the radio on, their backs a row of rigid lines descending by height. Lynn’s shoulders are shaking a little, and Bucky feels like he thinks Steve must feel every time he can’t breathe, like his lungs are too small in his chest.

He goes to the kitchen to grab a rag and picks up the shattered glass on the periphery of the argument. It’s everywhere, little pieces mixed in with bigger pieces and all of them sharp enough to cut. He tries to ignore the loud sound of his parents’ voices. Someone slams their palm down on the table, hard enough to make him jump. His hand slips on a particularly small shard and he picks it out carefully, puts his finger in his mouth to stop the bleeding. When it’s done he wraps the rag up carefully, tucking all the corners in, and carries it to the trash.

He doesn’t dare go into the dining room. The girls are still sitting on the couch, silent and stiff, so Bucky coaxes them up and leads them into the bedroom they all share. His finger is still bleeding a little, and he wipes it on his dark sock before the girls notice. He sits them down on their full-size bed and climbs in with them, ignoring his own small cot on the other side of the room. They pile onto the wide, worn mattress, all bundled together in a big lump with Bucky in the middle, an arm around his leg, one around his chest, another tucked in close against his back.

“They’re always fighting, now,” says Becca, her face pressed between his shoulder blades, voice muffled in the back of his shirt. Bucky reaches back blindly to find her wrist and wrap his fingers around it. Lynn hiccups into his shoulder, head wedged up under his chin.

Something else shatters, in the living room this time, and Judy flinches, her head shifting on Bucky’s hip. He reaches down to touch her hair. “I know,” he says in a low voice, and he doesn't know if he's saying it to Becca or to all of them.

There's nothing else to say that’s not a lie. He knows they can’t afford all the broken dishes now spread across the house, in pieces on the floor. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to pick them back up. He thinks he may spend the rest of his life finding little pieces of glass in the corners of rooms or stuck in the soles of his own feet, tracking blood across the floor. Bucky feels sick to his stomach.

The sky is fully dark now, smog thick enough to block out the stars and turn the moonlight grey and hazy, but under the blankets it’s warm and the darkness is softer, full of little hands and the sounds of all four of them breathing. Lynn’s tiny feet press into his stomach, and he drops a kiss on the top of her head. He pretends not to notice the way she wipes her wet face all over his collar.

They stay like that until the shouting stops, until the sound of one person’s footsteps passes and the other bedroom door clicks shut. The radio in the living room changes stations and they all fall asleep to tinny voices and the near-imperceptible sound of their collective heartbeats.

**Author's Note:**

> I've tried to make this as historically accurate as possible, to the point where I looked up whether queen sized beds had been invented yet (they hadn't) and whether or not certain sayings were in common use by 1929. That said, if you notice any anachronisms, please let me know!
> 
> Teen and up warning for swearing. No one will ever convince me eleven/twelve year olds in New York City in 1929 wouldn't say fuck at least sometimes, mostly just because they could.


End file.
